Arthur Eckstein's fresh and stimulating interpretation challenges the way Polybius' Histories have long been viewed. He argues that Polybius evaluates people and events as much from a moral viewpoint as from a pragmatic, utilitarian, or even "Machiavellian" one. Polybius particularly asks for "improvement" in his audience, hoping that those who study his writings will emerge with a firm determination to live their lives nobly. Teaching by the use of moral exemplars, Polybius also tries to prove that success is not the sole standard by which human action should be judged. Arthur Eckstein's fresh and stimulating interpretation challenges the way Polybius' Histories have long been viewed. He argues that Polybius evaluates people and events as much from a moral viewpoint as from a pragmatic, utilitarian, or even "Machi

Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they used to bring them across. Hau also shows how moral didacticism was an integral part of the writing of history from its inception in the 5th century BC, how it developed over the next 500 years in parallel with the development of historiography as a genre and how the moral messages on display remained surprisingly stable across this period. For the ancient Greek historiographers, moral didacticism was a way of making sense of the past and making it relevant to the present; but this does not mean that they falsified events: truth and morality were compatible and synergistic ends.

Philip V of Macedon in Polybius' Histories: Politics, History, and Fiction offers a historiographical and literary study of Polybius' portrait of Philip V and aims to advance our knowledge of both the Macedonian king and the historian. It takes a chronological and thematic approach, exploring how Polybius' political, historiographical, and didactic aims impact the king's depiction from beginning to end. The first half focuses on political and rhetorical aspects: it highlights the embedded Achaean perspective of the narrative and how this fundamentally shapes Philip's image; it re-evaluates key character-defining episodes, such as the sack of Thermum and the attempt on Messene; and it problematizes Polybius' claim that Philip became increasingly treacherous and tyrannical towards the Greeks after 215 BC. The second half explores how Polybius develops his interpretation of the king through ideological and literary means: it investigates how Polybius uses cultural politics to blacken Philip's image and justify the exchange of Macedon and Rome as hegemonic powers in the Greek world; it rationalizes his use of a tragic mode for Philip's last years, examining the implications this styling has for our historical understanding of the king; and it considers how tensions between Polybius' narrative and commentary on Philip may be the result of his combination of historiographical and biographical modes of presentation. It finishes by resituating Philip in the broader context of the Histories, drawing comparisons between his portrait and that of other kings and leaders, and discussing how kings are shaped by and contribute to the arguments in the Histories.

"Smart and sophisticated. A work that is simultaneously a sensitive study of a major Greek historian and a probing analysis of the Greco-Roman society in which his history was produced."—John Marincola, author of Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography

Polybius was a Greek statesman and political prisoner of Rome in the second century b.c.e. His Histories provide the earliest continuous narrative of the rise of the Roman Empire. In this original study informed by recent work in cultural studies and on ethnicity, Craige Champion demonstrates that Polybius's work performs a literary and political balancing act of heretofore unappreciated subtlety and interest. Champion shows how Polybius contrived to tailor his historiography for multiple audiences, comprising his fellow Greeks, whose freedom Rome had usurped in his own generation, and the Roman conquerors. Champion focuses primarily on the ideological presuppositions and predispositions of Polybius's different audiences in order to interpret the apparent contradictions and incongruities in his text. In this way he develops a "politics of cultural indeterminacy" in which Polybius's collective representations of political and ethnic groups have different meanings for different audiences in different contexts. Situating these representations in the ideological, political, and historical contexts from which they arose, his book affords new and penetrating insights into a work whose subtlety and complexity have gone largely unrecognized.

In a provocative study on comparative empire, noted historians identify periods of transition across history that reveal how and why empires emerge. Loren J. Samons on Athens and Arthur Eckstein on Rome examine classical Western empires. Nicholas Canny discusses the British experience, Paul Bushkovitch analyzes the case of imperial Russia, and Pamela Kyle Crossley studies Qing China's beginnings. Frank Ninkovich tackles the actions of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, which many view as imperial behavior. What were the critical characteristics that distinguished the imperial period of the state from its pre-imperial period? When did the state develop those characteristics sufficiently to be called an empire? The authors indicate the domestic political, social, economic, or military institutions that made empire formation possible and address how intentional the transition to empire was. They investigate the actions that drove imperial consolidation and consider the international environment in which the empire formed. Kimberly Kagan provides a concluding essay that probes the historical cases for insights into policymaking and the nature of imperial power.

M. John-Patrick O'Connor proposes that - in contrast to recent contemporary scholarship that rarely focuses on the ethical implications of discipleship and Christology - Mark's Gospel, as our earliest life of Jesus, presents a theological description of the moral life. Arguing for Mark's ethical validity in comparison to Matthew and Luke, O'Connor begins with an analysis of the moral environment of ancient biographies, exploring what types of Jewish and Greco-Romanic conceptions of morality found their way into Hellenistic biographies. Turning to the Gospel's own examples of morality, O'Connor examines moral accountability according to Mark, including moral reasoning, the nature of a world in conflict, and accountability in both God's family and to God's authority. He then turns to images of the accountable self, including an analysis of virtues and virtuous practices within the Gospel. O'Connor concludes with the personification of evil, human responsibility, punitive consequences, and evil's role in Mark's moral landscape.